A Posse Ad Esse
by Paikea
Summary: This is slightly AU. Cat never wrote the infamous poem the movie is named for. Joey never let slip at the prom that he was paying Patrick. However Joey is, as always, self-serving, and it wasn't out of good-heartedness that he kept quiet. One-sided slash.


I can never really pinpoint the moment I decided I wanted Patrick Verona's mouth on my cock. I remember thinking he had unusual and ascetically pleasing bone structure in his face that morning on the sports oval, when I first recruited him into our little gang of conspirators. But that's just how you learn to think as a model, and, being a fairly in-demand one at that, I'd developed a habit of assessing the people around me. It was kind of a game. And Patrick belonged in a Hugo Boss advertisement.

I think the first time I heard a faint internal whisper on the subject of Patrick, and how much easier on the ears his smoky accented voice was than, say, Bianca's shrill staccato, and how he looked both playful and capable of anything when he smiled, was when he had the audacity to tell me he wanted double what we'd agreed on right after The Bitch had maimed my car. I mean, the nerve of the guy. Here I was, just having taken him to task about taking too freaking long with the Cat situation, and his response? He flashed that grin at me, and taunted me with the embarrassment of not being able to get some mindless sophomore girl if I wanted her.

I wondered then if I was getting myself in too deep with Mr Verona. That's the trouble with people like him and Cat. They don't play by the rules. I couldn't threaten him with social ostracization when it was his preferred social status anyway.

And… I found myself wanting him to look at me with respect and even liking, rather than with faint mocking or an inscrutable stare, or that Cheshire Cat grin that was as unreadable as a piece of blank paper. The respect of the baddest dude in school could hardly hurt my standing.

I thought I was hallucinating when he turned up at Bogey's party with the Shrew. The guy was a frigging miracle worker. But I also remember thinking, as the night progressed, that something was off. Bianca wasn't as attentive as she should have been, but everybody else seemed to know their place, and when Cat started table-top dancing I thought things couldn't get much better. The sour note was struck when I saw the way Patrick looked as he helped Cat outside. Like she wasn't just some socially inept angry little girl I was paying him good money to take out. He looked like she mattered. He looked scared, and was going on about how she could have concussion. He looked vulnerable.

I wanted that look.

So when Bianca came to the prom with that whiny little runt, Cameron, I didn't blow up at Patrick like I wanted to. I came close though, seeing him dancing with Cat, laughing with Cat, _smiling_ at Cat, and knowing I'd brought that about and I didn't even have Bianca to show for it.

I waited, and I pulled him aside, after Cat read her soppy love poem out to the entire English class, and everyone had applauded as she and Patrick kissed afterwards. I dragged him away from the crowd of newfound friends, products of his burgeoning and inexplicable popularity, and down a deserted corridor where I backed him up against a locker and got in his face.

"You know our little deal is off?" I said, hands flush against his shoulders. "Become less of a charade for you, has it, Pat?"

He looked at me warily, and slowly peeled my hands away from his body. I ground my teeth over the fact he was slightly taller than me, but despite his height, and the black, crackling glare he was giving me, he's actually a pretty willowy guy, and my arms and chest were toned from PE. I was pretty sure I could take him, provided he didn't pull any moves on me he'd learnt from training with ninjas in the Brazilian jungles last year… or whatever the rumor was.

"What's it to you, Joey," he said slowly. "I did everything you asked me to do. It wasn't up to me to make sure Bianca took it into her empty little head that you were the guy for her, all you paid me to do was make sure she could date."

I nodded, and flashed him my toothpaste commercial smile. He looked, if possible, even warier.

"That's right, Verona, you did do everything I paid you to do." I paused a moment, to enjoy this. "And Cat doesn't know you were paid to do it."

There it was. That look I'd wanted. I sucked in a breath. He hadn't been expecting that, and for a moment he was completely dismayed. Then the shutters came down with an almost audible click.

"You planning on telling her?" he asked, doing a commendable job of sounding casual.

He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and flicked it open. When he was lighting up I noticed his fingers shook just a little.

So he had fallen for the Shrew. I shook my head in wonder. I mean, I'd known the guy was whacked, but I didn't know he was into masochism.

I plucked the cigarette out of his mouth. "No smoking in the corridors, Verona," I said in a creditable imitation of Ms Perky. "Thought you gave up anyhow."

"Answer the question, Donna," he said quietly. He obviously didn't like being played with.

"That depends," I said, purposefully looking thoughtful. "There's something else you could do for me."

"Like what?" The glare was back, and he'd taken a step forward into my space.

"What would you be prepared to do to keep Cat from finding out?"

"Cat ain't gonna be finding out," he said, his Australian accent becoming more pronounced along with the anger in his voice. His hands came up and shoved me hard in the chest.

"You know what I've done to little punks like you?" He asked, the shit-eating grin making a sudden appearance. "C'mon, you must have heard some of the things they say about me."

I stepped back as he came at me, and then swept his feet out from under him. He got a fistful of my shirt on the way down and the next second we were nose to nose on the corridor floor.

"Get off me," he spat, shoving at me. I got his wrists over his head, but it was like trying to pin a lanky cat.

"_Listen,_" I snarled, and seized a handful of dark curly hair – it felt a lot cleaner than I'd dared hope – and smacked his head back against the tiles.

Dazed, he stopped struggling.

"I didn't say it had to be unpleasant," I continued, breathing a little easier, but keeping his arms above his head. I rolled my hips forward slightly, where they were cradled in the V of his legs, and had the pleasure of seeing his eyes widen in shock.

Then he burst out laughing.

"You know, Joey, you have a kind of backwards way of doing things, don't you?"

I clenched my jaw. _That _grin again.

"Backwards," I repeated.

"Yeah. You got the hots for someone, so you set them up with a chick so you can blackmail them later? Jesus, man."

He was still laughing.

"It wasn't exactly as… foreseen as that," I gritted out.

"Well the answer is no can do," he said, snapping back to serious abruptly. "And get the hell off me before I redecorate your locker with the contents of your own skull."

"And Cat?" I asked tauntingly, not moving.

A pained look came into his eyes.

"She'll deal," he said flatly. He didn't say _I hope_, but he may as well have.

"Right," I snorted. "_She'll deal_. She'll deal with the boy she's in love with being paid to date her by the person she hates most in the world."

"She'll deal with that a lot more readily than she'd deal with the boy she's in love with doing the dirty with the person she hates most in the world in order to keep her from finding out he was paid to take her out… _by_ the person she hates most in the world."

I paused. _Good point._

"That's supposing she finds out though," I said softly after a moment. "How long now till she's off to Sarah Lawrence?"

"Who's Sarah Lawrence?" he said, looking distracted. "And would you _get the fuck off me?_"

I froze for just a second. Surely that would be too good to be true?

"You don't _know_?" I asked, trying to keep the delight out of my voice. "It was all Bianca was talking about before the prom, how happy she was The Bitch was going to an East Coast college."

He stared at me for a second, breathing hard.

"Yeah… well… we had an argument the day before the prom… and… it probably just slipped her mind."

He was staring over my left shoulder now, and the shutters were so tightly in place his eyes looked flat and glassy.

Slowly, I let go of his arms, and eased back.

"Look, Patrick," I said, "think about it. Is it worth having Cat go off to Sarah Lawrence hating your guts, or can you swallow your pride long enough to –"

"To what?" he cut me off. "To swallow something else? No offense, Donna, you do whatever gets your rocks off, but that ain't exactly my thing."

"It's amazing what we can become accustomed to," I said coldly, "when we have to."

I didn't even see the punch coming.

******

Two days later he was sitting on the hood of my car when I came out of the Taco Bell in town.

"Cat tell you about our conversation?" I asked, not looking at him.

"Cat and I broke up," he said flatly. "I asked her about Sarah Lawrence, and after we discussed it we decided her education is what's important at this time in her life, and that it would be too difficult to make it work. She's not sure she's coming back this way even after college."

He gave me a sidelong look.

"And she told me she got a strange phone call from you where you said I wasn't who she thought I was right before she slammed the phone down on you. She said she'd trust a snake to baby sit a toddler before she'd trust a word that comes out of your mouth."

He was grinning now.

"I wouldn't be looking that happy," I said. "You still lost the girl."

His grin widened. "I lost the girl on _my_ terms, Donna. Surely a guy like you can understand that."

He walked off then, and left me standing by the side of my car, wishing I'd kissed him when I'd had him pinned down on the floor.


End file.
